“Get out immediately” from abusive relationships - Minister Webster warns women

“Get out immediately” from abusive relationships – Minister Webster warns women

Aug 05, 2013 News

Minister of Human Services and Social Security Dr. Jennifer Webster yesterday sounded the alarm for women who may be in abusive relationships to “get out immediately”.

Minister Jennifer Webster

The Minister in an invited comment urged women who are experiencing not only physical but also other forms of abuse to leave.
Webster made the comment in the wake of a recent spate of incidents of domestic violence which have resulted in the deaths of both women and children as well as the maiming of others.
The Minister explained that the Ministry has various services which are provided to victims of abuse, adding that domestic violence isn’t just between a man and woman, but the entire community also has its role to play.
“Domestic violence is everybody’s business….don’t wait until something happens then to say the woman lived in an abusive relationship.”
Webster hinted that her Ministry may have to revisit the present legislation relating to domestic violence. According to the Minister the law will have to be amended so as to ensure that even if a woman “backs out” on giving evidence against her abuser, the police can still proceed with the matter once there is sufficient evidence.
On Wednesday a 26-year old man allegedly chopped to death his five-year-old daughter Kimberley Houston and her little brother, two-year-old Tarif Lord. The incident occurred shortly after 6:00pm at their Lot 864 Zeelugt Squatting Area home. The children’s mother, 21 year- old Bibi Nazarena Houston’s right hand was severed and the fingers from her left hand were cut-off.
The woman somehow managed to survive the savage cutlass attack by bolting from their modest dwelling house after her mother had intervened during the melee.
On Thursday Attorney-at-law Wanda Fortune was among four persons injured after her stepfather went berserk and also chopped her two sisters and mother at Sophia. Fortune, 26, was discharged from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation on Friday. She sustained about three lacerations to her back and another to her head.
Her mother, Dorothy Blackman-Fordyce is in a critical but stable condition at the hospital’s High Dependency Unit with her 20-year-old daughter, Latoya Wilson, just a few beds away from her. Wilson was chopped once to her neck while her mother sustained two chop wounds to her head, which has left her with a fractured skull. She also sustained wounds to the hands and about her body.
Twelve-year-old Donette Fordyce is also a patient at the hospital but in the Paediatric Ward. She sustained wounds to both her hands. The alleged assailant, Shawn Fordyce, has been on the run since the brutal assault.
On Saturday morning news of a murder/suicide rocked the village of Mahaica, ECD. Relatives and neighbours made the gruesome discovery of the semi-nude body of 26-year-old Vanessa Richmond-James with her hands and feet bound, and her throat slit, around 06:00 hours.
The woman’s husband, a former member of the Guyana Defence Force, ingested poison and succumbed. Police are convinced that the ex-soldier killed his wife during a heated domestic spat, hours after they had left a queh-queh that took place in the community the previous night.